


The Five People You Meet in Hell (And One You Don't)

by ObliObla



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Hell, Hell Loops (Lucifer TV), Minor Character Death, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21643471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObliObla/pseuds/ObliObla
Summary: There are many doors in Hell. Billions, even.As Lucifer walks its endless, ashen passageways, he comes across a door that seems familiar. He steps up to it, presses it open, and...For Lucifer Bingo prompt: damages
Comments: 13
Kudos: 68
Collections: LuciferBingo





	The Five People You Meet in Hell (And One You Don't)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced sexual assault

Lucifer is standing in the sparsely furnished living room of a trailer house. The door hangs open, the screen door—complete with torn up screen—sways creakily in the warming summer breeze. The carpet is threadbare, the wallpaper cheap, complete with a yellow nicotine ring near the ceiling as on a filthy bathtub. The couch is old and dotted with cigarette burns; a large tabby cat sleeps fitfully on a lumpy cushion.

There is stillness for a moment, interrupted only by the stilted ticking of a wall clock, but then a small blonde child runs full tilt from the smaller of the two bedrooms. There are tear tracks on her rosy cheeks and the dark beginnings of a bruise burgeoning on her arm. She careens past the couch, past the cat—which looks up blearily—and past Lucifer to stumble out of the open doorway and down the rotting wooden stairs. A woman storms down the hallway after her, violence in the tightening of her hands into fists. She stomps out onto the porch and glares after the girl who is still running.

“You come back here,” she shouts, “or I’ll give you a reason to cry!”

And the girl runs and runs and runs, barefoot over rough asphalt, burrs clinging to the ragged edges of her cheaply made dress. The woman turns to head back inside and glances at Lucifer, seeing him for the first time. “She’ll be back,” the woman tells him, picking a heavy wooden hairbrush off the arm of the couch, beating it against her open palm.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

“She always comes back,” the woman says, face blank, waiting.

And the scene shifts.

The girl is older, now, though still undeniably a girl. She’s not running—at least, not physically—but there are still tear stains on her face, and there is still a bruise burgeoning on her arm. There is a man without a face, or maybe with a thousand faces, and he grabs her by her bruised bicep, pulling her back to him as she tries to get away. He laughs drunkenly and grasps her hips, dragging her into his lap.

“Where you going, sweetheart?” he asks, still laughing, pressing his fingertips to her cheeks, brushing the tears away roughly, without even a modicum of care.

“Get off me!” she shouts, struggling against him. But she is small, and he is much larger, and he only shifts them, pinning her to an ugly couch, or maybe it’s the stained seat of an old pickup truck.

“Why would I wanna do that?” he asks, and Lucifer is close enough he can smell the putridity on the man’s breath, the staleness of his sweat.

The girl tries to twist away, but the man is strong, and she’s shoved back against that nebulous surface. She tries to shout, but he clamps a filthy hand over her mouth. Her eyes cut away from his face to Lucifer, fear and recriminations combating on her face. Lucifer turns away, from guilt or shame or impotence, he’s not certain.

He hears the sound of a zipper being pulled.

And the scene shifts.

The girl is older, now. A woman, but only just. She is dressed in a shimmery dress and sings into a microphone. Old standards and new hits, all of them flow from her lips like stars drawn from primordial light, setting the world ablaze.

And Lucifer sits at a piano, leading her through song after song, unable to stop. The woman sings with such beauty that her audience is enchanted, but soon her voice wearies and grows hoarse. And yet still she smiles at the crowd of people around them, though when she turns to him, her cheeks are tear stained, and there is a bruise burgeoning on her arm.

And they still can’t stop.

The scene shifts again.

Lucifer is standing in an ostentatious bathroom a thousand miles from any dingy trailer house. But, still, there is an aura of death and fear here that always lingered there. The woman isn’t much older, but there is such weariness in the lines of her face that is only barely covered by the thick makeup she’s applying, staring into a mirror with a horrible blankness in her wet eyes.

This is, he knows, everything she ever desired. Everything he helped her achieve, but it only seemed to turn to bitterness.

A door opens behind him, and he and the woman turn together to see a familiar man step in.

“This is the women’s bathroom,” she says, her voice—that thing she thought would save her, that thing _Lucifer_ thought might save her—weak and hoarse.

“I had to see you,” the man replies with a frightful fervor, the harsh words of an abusive mother and a violent date echoing along with him. “I…I want to get back together.”

“I don’t want to see _you_ ,” she says.

He steps forward, and Lucifer tries to catch him by the shoulder, but his hand falls through the insubstantial body. Or maybe he’s the one who’s insubstantial, a ghost who watches this man grab this woman by the arm, leaving a bruise that burgeons on her skin. A ghost who watches tears streak down her cheeks, who watches the man press the woman against a wall, who watches her try and fail to push him away. Who watches him break from her not because of anything she did, but because someone else begins to walk in—his shame only for what others might think, not for his own actions.

It is such a familiar dance it makes bile rise in Lucifer’s throat. He has seen it a million times, and he knows he will see it millions more. But he cannot prevent it, not now, and, equally, he cannot prevent the scene from shifting yet again. And he is finally, _finally_ real.

_It’s not about me. What happens now, that’s up to you._

He pulls her to him with such hope it nearly blinds him, such faith that she really will pull herself together, that after she dies he will never see her again. And that is the greatest blessing that could ever be bestowed—that he be denied the company of someone he cares for. He takes her in his arms, and there are no tears on her cheeks, there is no bruise on her arm. She is whole and hale, and she will _not_ waste her talent or her life.

And then the bullets bite into them both, and they fall. Though not like he fell—no, only a little mortal tumble that changes nothing. _That changed everything._ And when he awakes, there is glass shattered around them, and there is blood streaked in her blonde hair. And he knows how this memory is supposed to go, knows he abandons her to bleed to death on unworthy concrete, so tied up in punishment he forgot to mourn.

He didn’t know how.

But he knows what grief is, now. Knows how it feels to lose that light. Has felt it enough times that there is no longer peace in darkness. So this time he does not seek retribution, though he desires it still, will always desire it. Instead, he kneels on broken glass, brushes bloody hair from a bloody face with the utmost care, and watches the light leave her eyes.

And the scene shifts.

Lucifer is standing in the sparsely furnished living room of a trailer house. The door hangs open, the screen door—complete with torn up screen—sways creakily in the warming summer breeze. The carpet is threadbare, the wallpaper cheap, complete with a yellow nicotine ring near the ceiling as on a filthy bathtub. The couch is old and dotted with cigarette burns; a large tabby cat sleeps fitfully on a lumpy cushion.

There is stillness for a moment, interrupted only by the stilted ticking of a wall clock, but then a small blonde child runs full tilt from the smaller of the two bedrooms. But Lucifer makes himself ignore her, turns away, heads to the door to the other bedroom on the opposite side of the trailer. He pulls that door open, ignoring the shouts of the woman, the faint paces of the girl, and steps out into a jagged passageway made of stone, bathed in pale blue light and coated in ash.

 _I’m sorry, Delilah,_ he whispers, something so much crueler than benediction, so much poorer than prayer. But it is all he has so far down in the dark. It’s the only thing he has left to offer. He turns away from the door to head to the next. And the next.

And the next.


End file.
